Category: Anura

Suriname Toad With Eggs

Posted on by Bryan Hughes

Ok, weirdo.

This is a Pipa pipa (Surinam Toad) I photographed in Peru a couple of weeks ago – there were a lot of them! They’re entirely aquatic, and have a crazy reproductive process. After mating and eggs are ready, the male squishes them into swollen tissue on the back of the female (those white dots in their little back sacks. The eggs sink into the skin, and ride around with her for a few months. When they are ready to hatch, full little frogs (not tadpoles) emerge right from their mother’s back. What is more interesting to me is that at some point in the eggs-n-back part, the embryos are surrounded by highly vascular tissue, suggesting that nutrients and oxygen are transferred from the mother.

Greven, H., & Richter, S. (2009). Morphology of skin incubation in Pipa carvalhoi (Anura: Pipidae). Journal of Morphology, 270(11), 1311–1319. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmor.10749

Couch’s Spadefoot

Posted on by Bryan Hughes

Each year during the monsoon, these amazing little frogs show up. They’re often mistaken for poisonous toads due to their superficial similarity and typically green color. It’s a Couch’s Spadefoot, a small and harmless species that spends much of its time underground. Its name is literal: to help with the underground lifestyle, it has hard protrusions on each hind leg to help dig in.

They also have, unlike most amphibians, cat-eyes (this one has them wide open, however). If you see one, you can ignore it as it’s not at all dangerous, but still keep your dog from eating it.